In split votes Friday, the House of Representatives put President Barack Obama closer to fast-track authority to negotiate a massive Pacific trade bill expected to have a multibillion-dollar impact on Georgia’s economy.
But the pact’s approval remains in doubt mostly because of Obama’s own party.
With most of Georgia’s Republican members in favor, the House narrowly approved Trade Promotion Authority. But Democrats — spurning a personal appeal on a rare Obama trip to Capitol Hill — voted down assistance for displaced workers that was meant to be attached to the trade package before it goes to the president’s desk.
House leaders said they will stage a re-vote on trade adjustment assistance next week in the hopes that Democrats reverse course.
Business, labor offer clashing opinions
Congress is not voting on the trade deal itself, but on authority for Obama to negotiate it under certain parameters. The bill would ensure that a final agreement could not be amended by Congress, authority seen as crucial to get the other 11 nations to sign on to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Under the terms of TPA, the trade deal would be made public for at least 60 days before it gets an up-or-down vote.
“We get a seat at the table while the negotiations are going on,” said U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Cassville Republican who remained undecided until the final moments. “So if the president goes outside the guidelines put in TPA, we know it then, not later.”
Business groups have been lobbying for the deal for years. The Business Roundtable calculated that Georgia exported $13.7 billion worth of goods to the 11 TPP countries, supporting 475,900 jobs, in 2013. A deal would help tariffs fall in nations such as Japan and New Zealand for Georgia agricultural products, for example.
Organized labor says labor standards and human rights issues in countries such as Vietnam fall well below U.S. standards, and the deal will accelerate the movement of American manufacturing overseas. Many working-class Americans still spit out “NAFTA” with disdain after the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement was criticized for allowing speedier re-locations of U.S. jobs to Mexico.
The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimated that Georgia lost 22,200 net jobs because of trade imbalances in the first decade of NAFTA. A Public Citizen compilation of federal data shows that Georgia lost 161,759 manufacturing jobs — 31 percent of the state's total — from 1994 to 2014.
Democrats firmly reject assistance they normally like
“My constituents from Georgia are calling and writing my office in waves,” U.S. Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, said in a thunderous floor speech.
“For over 20 years they have felt the hardship of unfair trade. Textiles and automobile factories disappear from metro Atlanta. Good jobs are shipped to Bangladesh, to China, to Mexico,” Lewis said. “America should not have to compete with starvation wages and environmental destruction.”
Lewis and U.S. Rep. David Scott, another Atlanta Democrat, chatted and grinned on the House floor as they watched the trade adjustment assistance vote go down. The aid program for displaced workers is generally supported by Democrats and is set to expire in September.
The bill would expand TAA, but goaded on by organized labor, Democrats voted against it.
“This move here is just to undercut and confuse,” Scott said. “And so I don’t want to take any chances.”
House leaders’ idea was to take separate votes and then merge TAA with TPA to align with a version that already passed the Senate. But Republicans, who generally consider TAA to be a form of welfare, were not on board, and Democrats — including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — bucked Obama in an effort to kill the whole trade deal.
But the House went ahead and voted for TPA anyway, and it squeaked through, 219-211.
Two Georgia Republicans vote against trade bill
The two Georgia Republicans who voted against TPA were U.S. Reps. Doug Collins of Gainesville and Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County. The state’s Democrats were all opposed.
Westmoreland got an earful on the floor from pro-trade Republicans and watched the voting board intently, casting his “no” vote only after passage was secure. A spokeswoman later said Westmoreland was a “no” all along but leadership asked him to hold back his vote until the end.
Republicans were assailed with calls from conservative constituents concerned about so-called “Obamatrade,” convinced that the trade deal would be used to empower the president on anything from immigration to climate change policy.
Loudermilk said he had to battle such “myth” by putting out more facts about the bill, including publishing it on his website.
Westmoreland agreed that much of the anti-trade talk was false, but he said he still did not want to give Obama any more power.
“Having taken the opportunity to read the available sections of TPP, I don’t believe it would circumvent any existing laws in regards to global warming or immigration,” Westmoreland said in a statement. “But the president’s past actions show no evidence of obeying congressional intent or that he would follow any of the guidelines set forth in TPA.”
As the TPA vote passed, cheers broke out and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. — its most visible and tireless advocate — choked up with emotion as he accepted congratulations.
White House will continue courting Democrats
Obama put out a statement thanking those who voted for TPA, adding, “I urge the House of Representatives to pass TAA as soon as possible, so I can sign them both,” a possible hint that he would be willing to sign fast-track alone.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest called the whole thing a "procedural SNAFU" and said the White House would hope to turn Democrats around over the weekend by urging them to support the expansion of a program they already like. The Obama administration said 10,996 Georgians have received TAA payments since 2009.
Pelosi, who has a tight grip on her caucus, helped sway the TAA vote by coming out against it in the final minutes. In a letter to her House Democratic colleagues after the 126-302 tally, she wrote that "the overwhelming vote today is a clear indication that it's time for Republicans to sit down with Democrats to negotiate a trade promotion authority bill that is a better deal for the American people."
U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Lithonia Democrat, said he was looking forward to a future “clean” vote on TAA, unattached to a trade deal. But the path forward is a murky one.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen after this,” he said in the moments after the vote. “There’s a lot of confusion in there right now.”
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